Microsoft tried and failed miserably with their WebTV/MSN TV
initiative to bring the functionality of a PC to the TV. AppleTV did a little better but never really caught on. Now Google, in association with Intel and Sony, are trying out set top box technology on the Dish Network. They hope to make hitting sites like Twitter and Picasa as easy as changing the channel. Of course, hitting those sites is as easy as that on a PC, and services like Hulu or the actual network stations themselves make getting your TV shows just as easy. The question seems to be if anyone

Join The Escapist, who obviously got their hands on a beta key, in introducing the Terran race from StarCraft 2 : The Unreleased. From Schwarzenegger
impersonating Thors to the odd merging of Dropship and Medic that is the Medivac, all the units are covered along with a quick look at their capabilities.
Or, if you want something a little lighter you can

According to the information [H]ard|OCP received, the new ATI 10.3a Catalyst Driver Update will focus on performance, to the point of not being WHQL certified when it first becomes available. This is fairly big news as lately the big goal that AMD has been striving for is to release a driver every month, regardless of how little has changed. 10.2 should arrive today, not quite as ambitious as the 10.3a will be, but bringing some nice enhancements to anyone running a Cr

Slashdot adds a little FUD to your morning with this report (and tool) from ElcomSoft about the efficiency of utilizing an AMD GPU to crack iPhone and iPod passwords. It would seem that not only is a Radeon HD5970 twenty times faster than a Core i7 960 it is almost twice as fast as a Telsa S1070. Putting aside the security issue for a moment to focus on parallel processing power, it seems a bit embarrassing for nVIDIA to have their supercomputing, mass

The Logitech Speaker Lapdesk N700
combines two peripherals into one and does it in a rather competent manner. Firstly it is a laptop stand, putting your notebook on a slight incline, making typing a little more comfortable than a flat keyboard about an inch above the surface it is resting on. It also contains a fan to keep the laptop operating cooler than it would if it was flush with a flat surface. Add to that a battery

For 50 years now the SETI project has been searching the heavens for signs of an signal with an intelligent source. There are plenty of signals out there on every bandwidth possible but so far they all have natural sources as opposed to being generated artificially by an intelligence. So far there has been no sign, though a few new pulsars and quasars have been spotted and located. Slashdot links to information about the project and proposed changes to the scope her

Heat is of course the number one unwanted byproduct of semi-conductors and getting rid of it is becoming harder and harder. You can see the effects of this on the industry, as they try to create CPUs that require less power to do more calculations but we have already passed the point when strapping a kilogram of copper to a CPU is not unusual. Exotic solutions like peltiers and watercooling have become much more popular and is not limited to those brave few who wanted to build an entire cooling loop from scratch.

AnandTech has done a little bit of math and pointed out a little problem that will hit us by the end of the year. With the new CPU's coming from both companies and the fact that they will have several dozen cores or threads, that 4Gb/s connection will be split up so many ways that it will no longer be fast enough to feed those CPUs. We will be seeing servers with such incredible density that 100Gb/s services are no longer a dream, they will be a necessity to anyone wanting to take advantage of Magny-Cours or Nehalem EX.

For some bizarre reason there are people who do not like having large amounts of room being taken up by large speakers in a 7.1 configuration. Perhaps they have limited space or just do not appreciate the wonder that is a proper wall of sound. For those who choose to go that way, Techware Labs has reviewed a kit that offers wireless 2.1 sound. The EOS system consists of a receiver/broadcaster, wireless signal receivers and speakers, so drop by if that is your cup of tea.

Acer is planning on a new ultra thin line of notebooks with no frame and a keyless touch keyboard, according to DigiTimes. Combining those two features does offer a way to make the MacBook Air look like it has a beer gut, but that is not the most interesting fact about these notebooks. If reinforced glass is strong enough to be the back shell of a notebook, obviously it could also be used in a standard desktop monitor. An all glass monitor would have absolutely no bezel on the sides; can anyone sa

The Mythbusters might not have been able to build their own working jetpack but Martin Aircraft will sell you one for under $100,000, though shipping from New Zealand might be expensive. The jetpack won't require a pilots license right now, but if they start selling many of these the chances are quite good that some regulations will be put in place. In the mean time you can hit heights of up to 2,400 metres and top speeds of 60mph according to Martin Aircraft. You can see som

At Gizmodo you can see a keyless keyboard from Minebea called the Cool Leaf. It is one of three products that they have recently rolled out, the other two being a calculator and a universal remote control. All look like a translucent piece of plastic or glass but are in fact an electrostatic capacity type touch panel and a load sensor.
Waterproof and dirt proof, though probably not smudge proof, they are both attractive and utilitarian and might be on many a de